Xia Brookside Credits Paige For Being An Inspiration To Her

Xia ahead of the Mae Young Classic.

The 19-year old Leicester, England naive Xia Brookside was one of 32 competitors in this year’s Mae Young Classic tournament. The current IPW: UK Women’s Champion is no stranger to tournaments as she competed in last week’s tournament at the NXT U.K. TV tapings in Birmingham to crown the first-ever NXT U.K. Women’s Champion. Matches from the Mae Young Classic will air on the WWE Network beginning on September 5th and Xia was recently interviewed by TV Insider to discuss her efforts in the M.Y.C. among other topics.

Hailing from the U.K. there are a number of wrestlers who have set and reorganized the stage of British wrestling but there is one who Xia credits for getting her interested in the sport and that is the current SmackDown Live Paige who was signed by the WWE at the age of 19.

“I was so excited hearing Paige got signed,” Brookside said. “She was a female wrestler kind of in the same boat as me. She was this second-generation wrestler from a British family. As soon as she came over she got me thinking, ‘Hey, I can do that too. I can go out there and make a name for myself’, and here I am.”

Xia is the step-daughter of British wrestling legend and current WWE Performance Center trainer Robbie Brookside. Xia stated during this interview that Robbie was not too keen on her becoming a professional wrestler but he eventually gave in and told her if that she really wanted to do it then she would need to train hard to make a name for herself.

“When I told him that I wanted to start wrestling he was like, ‘Ahh,’” Brookside said. “Then he said, ‘Well, if you want to. Go out there and train for yourself. Go out there and work hard. Make a name for yourself, and you do it off your own back. That’s exactly what I did. Now he gets to see me wrestle live, which we are so excited about. I get to show him what I’ve been doing. I get to show him I’ve put in that hard work. I get to show the WWE Universe and the crowd at the Mae Young Classic. It’s a great feeling.”

See how Xia Brookside fared in this year’s Mae Young Classic tournament by checking out Fightful’s M.Y.C. II spoiler articles (Day One/Day Two).